


The Bowtie Is Ideology

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Pundit & Broadcast Journalist RPF (US)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-20
Updated: 2005-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:18:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1641038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon comes up with a metaphor for Tucker's bowtie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bowtie Is Ideology

**Author's Note:**

> Written for not jenny

 

 

For a man like Jon Stewart, who was accustomed to wearing many different personas - one for his personal life, one for his television show, one for his regular interviews - receiving oral sex from a pundit in the green room of CNN's _Crossfire_ represented a very tricky situation. Did this really count as an _interview_? Was it part of his personal life if Tucker Carlson was still wearing his formal suit? In the end, Jon decided to go with the persona everyone expected: he might very well have started the encounter with "I'm Jon Stewart, welcome to the Daily Show! Today, fellatio!"

And when Jon looked down _at_ said fellatio, it was difficult not to look _past_ it, past Tucker's busy mouth down to that trademark bowtie. Today's model had polka-dots. _Loud_ polka-dots. Jon had once wondered if there was any such thing as a quiet, restrained polka-dot pattern; this bowtie proved it. Next to this bowtie, every other polka-dot pattern was quiet and restrained by default. And when one was musing on the bowtie and the polka-dots, and still musing on one's own persona, it was difficult not to connect the two. Jon Stewart realised with a start that Tucker Carlson's bowtie was a perfect metaphor for _his_ persona. Not simply the trademark nature of it, but as an analogy - it summed up ideology right there.

Once upon a time, Jon considered, Tucker had worn a bowtie for the first time. To shock, probably, or at least to surprise. No one just _wore_ a bowtie. And then people had talked about the bowtie, and he'd gotten attention because of the bowtie, but then even if he decided he hated that goddamn bowtie and just wanted to throw it away and burn it and stomp on the ashes... he _couldn't_. He was _bowtie guy_ now. And that, Jon reflected, was what happened when you became a shrieking ideologue. You became shrieking ideologue guy. Once you say you actually like France because they blew up the Rainbow Warrior, that's a bowtie you have to wear. No matter the polka-dots.

When Jon came - and ideology or not, it had been pretty fantastic fellatio - Tucker leaned back and wiped his mouth and said something about whether or not he remained ridiculous, and Jon said; "Frankly, I think when - on your show, you know - when you fellate anyone who'll throw bricks at Democrats, that's much more expert."

 _Normal_ people who hate each other get to scratch during sex. TV pundits have perfect manicures that couldn't hurt a kitten, not that Jon Stewart or Tucker Carlson would want to hurt kittens. TV pundits can't scratch. They have to use their _words_.

Of course, some people are better at it than others.

Then Jon Stewart was bent over a desk in the green room with Tucker behind him doing his best impression of a piston - no lubricant, no reacharound, no artistry. No surprise. And of _course_ he's on top, because he's a shrieking ideologue, and a shrieking ideologue on the side that typically _isn't so fond_ of men who allow other men access to their anus. Not to mention all that fake masculinity talk, all that stuff about how Hilary Clinton just needed a good lay. It's the Jeff Gannon thing again. If you're on top, you're not gay. It doesn't bother Jon.

Jon never thought of himself as a shrieking ideologue. Jon thought of himself as a _smirking_ ideologue. It's an entirely different thing altogether.

Tucker was still wearing the top portion of his suit, because he had to go to some show he's got - some _new_ show, ever since _Crossfire_ finally and totally stopped hurting America - and Jon wouldn't want to disrupt the bowtie, as those things are not easy to tie. Also, it wasn't his bowtie to disrupt, and he couldn't really hold onto it in any position anyway. For a moment, Jon wondered how that fit with the bowtie as ideology metaphor, and then decided he was reading way too much into Tucker's choice of neckwear at a totally inappropriate time.

Once he stopped thinking of that, he realised that Tucker was saying something - "Who's not going to be my monkey _now_ , huh?" - over and over, and he could only derail it through a carefully deadpan statement, timed in between thrusts: "You know - that that sounds - really degenerate - and not in the fun way." Tucker shut up at that point.

If this was on _Gaywatch_ , Jon thought, there would be a graphic in the top corner and he could do that trick where he pointed with a pen and it went behind the graphic. That was a good one. If this was on _Crossfire_ , on the other hand - and Jon flashed back to that wonderful moment, where he'd said "Crossfire, or Hardball, or I'm Going To Kick Your Ass", and it occurred to him that maybe 'kick' wasn't the word in question before he reprimanded himself for making the obvious joke - the guy from the left would be criticising Tucker's technique around now. The rhythm was too improper, or there was too much chest work, why isn't he swivelling his hips more, isn't this incompetent sex technique really just emblematic of the modern Republican party? Then there would be shouting and maybe people would throw shoes at each other and Jon Stewart was glad, _glad_ that he had killed _Crossfire_ , and for one glorious moment he could see it spreading. O'Reilly's own mike cut, Limbaugh's "excellence in broadcasting" finally untrue of the broadcasting as well as the excellence, all the ideologues from all the factions and all the sides suddenly struck mute, and it was probably as much that wonderful image as the relentless pressure on his prostate that finally brought Jon to orgasm, and Tucker followed a moment later. _See,_ Jon thought to himself, _you **can** get bipartisan co-operation, if you really try._

"So," Tucker said later, and he was smirking in a _highly_ unpleasant manner, "do you hold to calling me a big dick on cable television?"

Being funny was Jon's bowtie, of course, the polka-dotted albatross around Jon's own neck. But Jon - to push a tortured metaphor even further, and one could make a joke about the Bush administration there but Jon preferred not to - could remove his bowtie analogy, swing the unraveled neckwear merrily around in his hand while Tucker was lying next to a tombstone labeled _Crossfire_ , desperately tugging at his neck to no avail. They're not easy to untie, either.

So Jon just said, "Fuck you," without a trace of irony, and walked back to Comedy Central whistling.

end

 


End file.
